Hi all,


My brand new 500 is only 3 weeks old and this morning whilst driving to work the instrument cluster light that lights up the Speedo dial but not the trip computer light seemed to be flickering.

It was almost like it was light sensitive because I drive a country route to work and the light came back on when I went into dark tree cover?? Any thoughts??

When the dial was unlit yet my lights inc the drls were on I pulled up to look outside the car and no bulbs had blown or were off???

No dash light on or warning saying there is a fault and no bulb mods done yet.

D

It's lit by LED lighting, and is indeed light sensitive..

bgunn said:

It's lit by LED lighting, and is indeed light sensitive..

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So are you saying that the 500 has a light sensor that will cut off the instrument cluster lighting when in daylight??

D

Yes

It freaked me for a bit as well. Especially as I constantly leave all the lights on.

Spinnerdcc said:

It freaked me for a bit as well. Especially as I constantly leave all the lights on.

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Okay that's cool then. I was getting freaked thinking my new car already had electrical or bulb issues.

Thanks so much to everyone for your speedy replies.

D

An example of a smart idea that doesn't quite work out (IMO).

OrangeSport said:

An example of a smart idea that doesn't quite work out (IMO).

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Why doesn't it work? Make it slower to react and you'll drive under trees and not see your speed, any faster and you'll give people epileptic fits.

Because a permanently on instrument panel light has never caused a problem for me. The flickering is just a tad annoying.

Nice idea in principal, but just not needed it reality. No big deal, but I would prefer it without it given the choice.

OrangeSport said:

Because a permanently on instrument panel light has never caused a problem for me. The flickering is just a tad annoying.

Nice idea in principal, but just not needed it reality. No big deal, but I would prefer it without it given the choice.

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Particularly as it's LEDs and should last forever. I suspect what they were going to do when they designed the hardware was to make it auto-dim at night (superbright during the day, comfortably dim in darkness), but I'm not sure whether their software has achieved this - seems like they've ended up with the opposite

-Alex

Does anyone know where the light-sensor that controls this is??

Mine seem to be either fully on or fully off (is this what other people are seeing?), and if I knew where the sensor was I could test the system by covering the sensor with tape temporarily so check everything is behaving correctly.

The sensor is just above the 95kph/60mph marking in the speedo cluster.